Question to the Department of Health and Social Care:

To ask the Secretary of State for Health and Social Care, whether he has met with the representations of the National Childbirth Trust to discuss the findings of its report, Hidden Half: bringing postnatal mental illness out of hiding, published in June 2017 and recommendations for tackling low rates of identification of perinatal mental illness.

My Rt. hon. Friend the Secretary of State for Health and Social Care has not met with the National Childbirth Trust.

The Department is aware of the National Childbirth Trust’s ‘Hidden Half’ Campaign. We are grateful to the National Childbirth Trust for their campaigning on this important issue.

This Government is committed to improving perinatal mental health services for women during pregnancy and in the first postnatal year, so that women are able to access the right care at the right time and close to home.

The Department is investing £365 million from 2015/16 to 2020/21 in perinatal mental health services, and NHS England is leading a transformation programme to ensure that, by 2020/21, at least 30,000 more women each year are able to access evidence-based specialist mental health care during the perinatal period.